The Ear Buddy® gets rid of annoying hisses and buzzes and allows you to turn up your digital volume to a higher level to improve resolution and quality without making you deaf!

And for those who like a bit more tech with their cuppa…

With your Smartphone or DAP, normally you probably listen to music with the digital volume control set at 60%. This means you have lost 2Bits of resolution. Basically, it’s like watching HD TV with some of the pixels from the screen missing. It’s okay – but you are not getting what you paid for.

You can turn it up to full volume but your ears (or the people around you) would not thank you for it. Adding the Ear Buddy® ‘attenuates’ or adjusts the volume and safely allows you to crank up the digital volume on your smartphone or DAP without painful consequences! This equals more music information being conveyed and gives you back those 2Bits and the full High Res music experience!

Technical example:

All smart devices use a digital volume control. The very nature of digital volume controls means that at normal 50% listening levels, the actual resolution is 14-Bits instead of 16-Bits!

If a source has (say) 114dB dynamic range and the Headphone is 30dB too loud, once the volume has been turned down 30dB the dynamic range is reduced to 84dB, or below CD quality, from what is an excellent result for a high-solution source.

Bye bye hiss

Hiss is very annoying when listening with headphones. This is caused by the mismatch between too much power from the smartphone/DAP when used with headphones which are high sensitivity.

The solution by IFI is to ‘attenuate’ or adjust the signal that cuts out the hiss and puts the enjoyment back into listening.

Transparent attenuation in a compact form factor with nice build quality.

I finally gave up on my Shure in-line volume control for it’s I love my fancy earphones and their exceptional sound performance, but I struggle with the sensitivity in “normal” use environments. Plugged into phones and iPods the background hiss emerges. Plugged into airplanes entertainment systems the leveling blows your head off during announcements.

For years I’ve been carrying around a Shure in-line volume contro (from their travel kit) with mixed results. They have mediocre build quality, unpredictable operation, and noisy pass-through when paired with top-end in-ears. I wanted a fixed level of attentuation with more attention to sound quality. (Bonus: this thing comes with a two-prong airplane adapter with the best build quality I’ve ever seen!)

Well here it is, this is my new go-to. The iFi Ear-Buddy has been great in initial testing. It feels great, it looks nice, it’s compact, it’s got no controls to screw up. Perfect. Perfect level of attenuation too, I drive my phone at full volume and it’s just barely too loud for casual listening.

The advertised intention is to allow your DACs to drive at higher output, pulling more bits from the data stream and improving sound quality. This has been evident on lower quality systems in testing, though I don’t honestly notice the purported jump from 14 to 16 bit sound in most of my setups.
Mostly I notice that the SPL is now way above the DAC noise floor, so there’s less background hiss in quiet sections.

Overall a very reasonable buy for improved experience over any comparable competition for in-line attenuation.